How Can Stress Effect your Daily Life
The agent: this is the source. The body tries to adapt to a physical, social, environmental or emotional stimulant. The stimulant can be minor, positive, exceptional, important, expected, unexpected or negative.
The reaction: the brain gives the alert depending on the stimulus. Immediate physiological reactions occur to allow the body to respond to the situation: increased heart rate, building blood vessels, adrenaline rush, etc.
Attitude: this is the intensity of the stress response following the message sent by the brain: binding, dangerous, demanding? The body reacts according to the message.
The definition of stress for most people tends to focus on the negative feelings and emotions it produces. Almost every definition of stress also discusses certain resultant physical, physiological or biochemical responses that are experienced or observed. A very comprehensive definition of stress that includes these and more is the biopsychosocial model, which, as it name suggests, has three components. This definition of stress distinguishes between an external element, another that is internal, as well as a third that represents the interaction between these two factors.
In brief, stress can be perceived as a reaction of the body to a difficult situation.
Some signs of stress:
- Diarrhea
- Headaches
- Dry mouth
- An acceleration of breathing
- A loss of appetite
- Muscular problems
- Chest pain
When you are constantly reacting to small or large stressful situations, without making physical, mental, and emotional adjustments to counter their effect, you can experience stress that can hurt your health and well-being. It is essential that you understand both your external and internal stress-causing events, no matter how you perceive those events.
Stress can also be positive. You need a certain amount of stress to perform your best at work. The key to stress management is to determine the right amount of stress that will give you energy, ambition, and enthusiasm versus the wrong amount of stress which can harm your health, outlook, relationships, and well-being.
Chronic stress occurs when the physiological response to stressful stimulants continues for a longer period. Sometimes, the personal difficulties, the level of daily requirement, the professional concerns … this leads to your brain producing stress hormones continuously and in large quantity, which has a strong impact in our body that can lead to diseases in the medium term and in the long term.
Sometimes it is not so easy to know if someone is suffering from chronic stress or not because, there is no medical test that can detect it. Levels of glucosteroid hormones in the blood are usually normal in the tests, although they are too high for the proper functioning of our body. We must be guided by the alarming symptoms or signs that tell us that we may be suffering from chronic stress:
- impaired sleep: insomnia, nightmares, hypersomnia …
- high blood pressure
- sugar or cholesterol above the standards
- memory loss
- irritable bowel or abdominal pain
- migraines
- aches
- low defences
- Depression…
In order to be able to manage your stress, you must identify the signs that cause it in the first place. Stressors must cbe identified clearly. It can be a job loss, a divorce, family difficulties, relationship difficulties, a move, etc. Once identified, we must be able to learn to prepare and face this kind of situation positively. Positive thinking always leads to positive results. If a person is often subject to stress, it can have a negative impact on the body.
How to manage your stress?
The best way to deal with stress is to prepare yourself for the changes you are feeling. To the extent that it is not possible to prepare, we must force ourselves to find a suitable solution. The whole thing is not to give way to a stress that will ravage your existence.
These Are 5 Other Tips That Could Help Us Against The Consequences Of Stress
- Do an express session of yoga or meditation
We isolate ourselves for about fifteen minutes, and we breathe. We focus on our breathing movements, without trying to change them, and we remain attentive to our bodily sensations and emotions. The goal? We refocus on what is most important: us.
- Relax your muscles
From head to toe, one at a time. Starting with the toes, each muscle is contracted as much as possible before releasing it, gradually going up to those of the face.
- Take a walk
And no need to go for miles! About ten minutes is enough to clear our head and divert our minds from our little irritants.
- Listen to music
It’s proven, music softens morals … and the consequences of stress. Classic, it would even lower blood pressure and heart rate. But the main thing is of course to listen to our favorite songs, since they will activate the famous hormones responsible for well-being.
- Visualize
Our imagination can also help us relax against the consequences of stress. Installed comfortably, we visualize a scene that makes us feel good: a place filled with happy memories, a loved one, our next vacation, etc.